The word of our Lord
Isaiah is such an amazing chapter of the Bible. It’s full of nasty and dark and depressing things, but the most incredible rays of undimmable light shine through.
Isaiah lived and prophesied in hard times … Israel was declining and its enemies were gaining strength. The government (in the person of the king) was not true to the Jewish faith, and the people were falling away. Sounds something like today, at least for the church in North America.
Isaiah 40:7-8:
The grass withers and the flowers fail,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fail,
but the Word of the Lord stands forever.
The people are grass - the nations are grass - the great of the world are grass - I am grass. Here today and gone tomorrow. But God (don’t a lot of really good things start with “but God?”) and His Word will stand forever.
Everything I do and everything I am is temporal and temporary … except what I do for Him.
Hope and comfort
Was just reading in Isaiah tonight and came across this passage:
“But you, O Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
You descendants of Abraham my friend …I took you from the ends of the earth,
From its farthest corners I called you.
I said, “You are my servant,”
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.So do not fear, I am with you.
Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
That’s great news for Christians. God will strengthen us and help us. He’ll uphold us with his righteous hand … which is especially good news for me, being full of unrighteousness!
Tags: bible, isaiah, christians, john koetsier
Romans chapter 14
This is the fourteenth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
Connection to Jesus: New Testament data visualization
IBM researchers working on social data visualization have made Many Eyes available to the public … and people have done some interesting things:
Co-occurence
One of the most interesting things that someone has uploaded is a data visualization of name co-occurence in the New Testament. In other words, how often names are linked together.
I did a brief video on what this looks like:
Authorship
The other social data visualization that I thought was interesting from a Christian perspective was this one: a visualization of authors of the New Testament.
Tags: christian, new testament, ibm, bible, john koetsier
My people do not know
I’m currently reading through Jeremiah, a book in the old testament, in my (mostly) daily devotions.
Romans chapter 12
This is the twelfth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
Romans chapter 10
This is the tenth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
Romans chapter 9
This is the ninth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
Romans chapter 7
This is the seventh installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
Romans chapter 6
This is the sixth installment of what I hope to be a complete “translation” of Romans. Please note that this is not scripture; it is my understanding of scripture. Any with questions or concerns should check the original.
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Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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